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Lawn Watering

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I never wanted to be the guy standing out in his yard with a garden hose watering his lawn.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it, mind you.  I’ve just never been the kind of dude to get all excited about TURF BUILDER and BROADLEAF KILLING ACTION.

But I did sometimes sit around dreaming about what it’d be like to own a home (you know, having a house on a nice plot of land and a nearby stream and a dog and a little writing cottage where I could sneak out back and write while wearing an over-sized woolen cardigan and sipping a steaming cup of tea while it snowed).

Somehow in becoming a home owner, I became the guy who stands in his yard with a garden hose watering the lawn.

Dreams are funny like that.  Even when you achieve them, they often come with a bunch of other stuff that’s just as annoying or tedious as anything you had to deal with before you accomplished them.

Many authors discover that once they’ve Become Published, they have to spend an awful lot of time doing things that aren’t Writing, like interviews and book signings and guest blog posts and generally all the other self-promoting type activities that most of them never wanted to do in the first place.

A lot of entrepreneurs leave their humdrum 9-to-5 40-hour-a-week corporate job to go do The Thing They Love, and discover that now they’re working 8AM-to-midnight 100-hour-a-week jobs (because they only work 4 hours on Sundays) that include a whole bunch of stuff like sending out invoices and filing taxes and wondering why they’re making less now than they did working for The Man.

And don’t even get me started about what designing video games is REALLY like.  (Hint: It, surprisingly, from what I can tell so far, does NOT involve dropping off that 149 page notebook you filled up with GOOD IDEAS when you were in high school and returning 6 months later to find it implemented Just As You Envisioned and awesome.)

SPOILER ALERT:  The tedious will always be with you, wherever you go.  It’s part of the hidden cost of The Dream. But it’s a whole lot easier to handle when you’re dealing with the tedious bits of The Dream, instead of the tedious bits of the other thing you’re doing instead of The Dream.

(And by a whole lot, I might actually mean only marginally so.)

Because at least then there is Purpose.

At least, that’s what I try to tell myself when I’m standing in the front lawn in my bathrobe, dark socks, and flip flops, garden hose in hand, showering my precious baby grass seedlings and desperately hoping that maybe this will be the year they turn the tide against all the brown and yellowy gross creeping plant things that require no tending whatsoever to completely dominate a lawn and yet are, for some reason, not considered suitable ground cover by anyone else in the neighborhood not that I’m bitter.

The Myth of Comp Time

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There’s this thing about working in game development where you work lots of overtime and then at the end of the project, sometimes the Overlords will be kind enough to give you that time back.  They call it comp time.  Because, you know, they are compensating you for all the extra time you put in.

This isn’t unique to the games industry of course.  But regardless of the industry, the fact is IT’S ALL A LIE.

You can’t give time back.  Time used is gone forever.  It’s irreplaceable.  Sure you might get a few extra days to kick back and relax (or to finally do laundry! or shower!!), but that doesn’t do anything to give you back the nights you didn’t tuck your kids in, or the weekends you sent your significant other off on a vacation without you, or the opportunities you missed to pursue that side-business, or the meals you skipped, or the exercise you didn’t do.

Just another way that The Man is keeping us all down and stealing our dreams and keeping us sedated so we don’t realize it.

Except it’s not just The Man.  We do it to ourselves all the time.  We put off doing the things we know we should and promise we’ll double down tomorrow.  Or next week.  Or for the New Year.  But that’s not really how it works.

Every day that we spend not reading to our children, or listening to our spouse, or praying, or Doing The Work is another day we gave up to do something else, like watch reality TV.  Which ISN’T EVEN REALITY (spoiler).

As much as I want to, I can’t go back and cram five days of intense Lego-building into the lives of my kids and think that’s going to somehow undo the three weeks I spent on a business trip.  Those three weeks are gone.  I can’t go a month of avoiding The Novel and think that I can make up for it with a flurry of Intense Devotion the next month.  Ignoring your blog for two weeks and then writing five posts in a row doesn’t bring back the people who gave up looking at the same old posts on Day 10.

(I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ME!) (I’ve never written five posts in a row, so don’t talk to me that way, self!)

All that said, there’s no reason to beat ourselves up when we haven’t been as diligent as we would’ve liked, or haven’t devoted time to the things we really wish we had.  There’s a saying that I really like that I totally just invented right now which is trademarked TM me that goes:

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.  The second best time is now.

(Google may tell you that this is actually an ancient Chinese proverb, but I like to think of it more as spontaneous, completely independent invention, which I thought of totally on my own, at the exact moment or possibly the split-second after I read it somewhere else.)

Which is all just a way to remind myself that tonight is a Writing Night, not a Refresh Twitter Constantly one.

Between Inspiration and Perspiration

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There’s the old saying that goes:

something something something is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

It’s not a very good saying obviously, but for some reason it’s stuck around.  As we’ve seen elsewhere, inspiration is never actually more than 3% according to scientifically-proven FACT, it’s true you don’t even need to Google it.  And it turns out that the amount of perspiration is vastly overstated as well, and one crucial piece is missing, which basically makes the whole thing useless.

Okay, it’s not completely wrong I guess.  Inspiration and perspiration are both important parts to Doing the Work.  But it leaves out a crucial piece that is frequently overlooked when we’re going back and reconstructing the Narrative of Our Moment of Genius.

That critical component is cultivation.

The mythical Flash of Genius is mostly just that … a myth.  More often than not our A-ha moments aren’t lightning flashes from heaven as much as they are Take On Me, or maybe The Sun Always Shines on T.V.

BOOOOO!  Sorry, that was terrible. There was this band, see, and they did these songs …

ANYWAY, what I meant to say there was that the Sudden Flash of Inspiration is most often actually the exclamation point on a slowly unfolding process that we sometimes don’t even notice is taking place.  Frequently it starts as a sort of hunch, that maybe there’s an Interesting Solution out there worth thinking about, and maybe we’ll get around to thinking about it at some point.

When we get that initial flash of Inspiration, it’s tempting to think that all that remains is the Perspiration, and sometimes we jump the gun trying to Do Work before we’re really ready for it. This happens frequently in writing, but most certainly isn’t unique to writers.

In any creative endeavor, it can be extraordinarily helpful to set things aside for a time and do Something Else.  Sometimes when we chase a solution, it’s squirrely and evasive and annoying and it thinks we’re playing WHEN WE’RE REALLY NOT.  But when you go away for a little while, solutions have a way of coming to find you.  It’s why so many of us have our Epiphanies when we’re driving or sleeping or showering or generally somewhere where there’s most likely not a pen handy.

So if you’ve had a Great Idea and you haven’t quite gotten around to Doing Anything About It, don’t beat yourself up.  Between inspiration and perspiration, there needs to be room for cultivation.

Which is a fine way to explain why it is you’re sitting in a coffee shop perusing Twitter instead of finishing up Chapter Eight of your sequel, POSEY!

Attention vs. Affection

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Supposedly there’s no such thing as bad publicity.  But I’m pretty sure if someone were to reveal that the secret ingredient to your hugely popular savory cupcakes is retired racing horse meat, that’s not going to launch your bakery business in a positive direction.  (Unless you consider it from the retired racing horse perspective, I suppose.)

Sadly, as hard as it is to do these days, it’s not enough just to get people’s Attention anyway.  Attention isn’t really worth anything if there’s no lasting impression.  And if you leave someone with the wrong kind of impression, you’ve just about guaranteed that you’ve blown it with that someone forever.  (About your only chance for recovery in that case is for one of your Fans to win them back on your behalf.)

Promise someone a FREE IPAD* if they Buy Your Book, and include *$2200 processing fee to receive Free iPad in the fine print, and you will probably get a lot of word-of-mouth.  It just probably won’t be the kinds of words you were hoping for.

Affection, on the other hand, short-circuits all of the other nonsense and wins Fans.  And Affection doesn’t just win you one Fan.  It tends to spread.  Your newly Affectionate Fans go out and tell everyone else how great you are.  They cheer you on when you need encouragement.  And even if you screw up down the road, they’ll usually give you another chance.

How you win the Affection of your audience depends a great deal on what you’re offering.  But whether you’re a baker, or a teacher, or a CEO, or a banker, or a pastor, or a Senator, or a writer (yuck) the starting point tends to be the same: serve your people, deliver more than expected, and be grateful for each person that chooses to spend some of their limited time, money, or attention on anything you do.

Speaking of which, if you’ve read this far, I really appreciate you!  Can I interest you in a savory cupcake*?

 (*No savory cupcakes are actually available at this time.)

Prevail

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The greatest obstacle to achieving The Thing You’re About isn’t actually your boss, or your spouse, or your bills, or your circumstances, or your upbringing, or all the mistakes you’ve made along the way.

It’s you.

The reason you’re not achieving what you want to achieve is because you aren’t willing to pay the price it requires.  Despite what you say, something else is more important to you than the thing you claim is your one goal and purpose.  Your comfort.  Your status.  Your TV time.

Dreams cost.

Turn around to see what’s holding you back and you’re very likely to find it’s your own hand attached to your own arm attached to your own shoulder and contorted in a way that would freak everyone out if they weren’t doing the same thing.

You don’t need more time.  You need to be more intentional with the time you have.

If you really want to make a change, quit doing what you’re used to doing.  Say goodbye to the things you enjoy that don’t move you towards your goal.  If you are serious, be serious.  Fight yourself.

Prevail.

Oh hello dear readers!  You caught me talking to myself there.