I can't sleep…
I can’t quarrel with the limitations which are part of me—everybody has the severest of limitations. You are ultimately what you collectively wish to be. When someone says they could be so much more, I say, well you better get started right now, who’s stopping you? Face it, there’s an anchor tied to your ass.
~ Jim Harrison, Conversations with Jim Harrison
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Two years from now I can hear people saying: Your play is extraordinary. And my answer: It took me ten years to perfect my craftsmanship. I am wrestling with giants here. Every morning I wake up in a sweat, ready for the struggle. The impact is great, but I am never defeated. It is the rehearsals I miss, to attend them and see the progress the actors make. My being there is an absolute necessity. My eye and ear criticize every move and every intonation. I listen to the “commas” of the play as if they were drops falling from a fountain. Dis moi comment vont tout tes affaires. I am alone.
~ James Salter, Light Years
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And me? What did I want? I could answer that question in the few moments it took me to climb onto the bus, take my seat, and let it carry me to work under the pale light of the afternoon moon. What did I want? Maybe to believe what I had denied for longer than I could remember: that life could be something other than just a series of days and weeks and years to get through. Slog through, with my head down and eyes averted. Instead, it could actually be interesting, rich with possibilities. It could even be mysterious. Very mysterious. It could keep me up all night, thinking. Wondering. Listening. It could make me want to keep tuning around the universal dial, trying to find out what I might hear. What I might encounter. What did I want? There was no doubt about that now. What did I want? I wanted more.
~ Eleanor Lerman, Radiomen
Notes:
Ryan Avent has a lovely essay about the reasons modern professionals tend to put in such long hours. As he says, it’s not just drudgery: for many people work is satisfying, a source of a lot more than just money. It can, of course, also be a form of avoidance, a way to avoid the messiness of real life. But anyway, for those lucky enough to have the right kind of work, it’s much more than a paycheck.
I just thought I’d add a note from further down the pike, as someone who’s a quarter-century older than Avent: the nature of the reward from work does change as you get older, although it doesn’t necessarily go away. The phrase that runs through my mind is “the end of ambition.” At a certain point you realize that it’s not about winning another prize, literally or figuratively, getting a promotion, whatever. (And yes, it’s easier to reach that state of mind if you have been lucky enough to get all the prizes you wanted.) Instead, it becomes about the craft, the service, just doing well what you hope you do well. When that happens, you do lose some of the white-hot intensity of your younger years, and (in my case, at least) start trying to make up at least a bit for other things you didn’t do. (Music!) But there’s still plenty of work to do, and plenty of reasons to do it, with — maybe — some new-found serenity.
~ Paul Krugman speaks Truth in: Work, Life, and Everything
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You aspire to be a writer, a photographer, a painter, an actor, a journalist – an anything. You need to take a few moments to read this excerpt and then continue on to the full post.
“I read those words, and had a sticky, squirmy reaction; I felt the way I do when I stand back and witness the horror of someone else’s undoing. It’s a tight kink in the stomach; a hard walnut in the throat. We’ve all been there, haven’t we: we’ve seen the speaker who loses the words. The young actor who blanks out on stage. The musician who forgets the chords. The writer — the food writer; science writer; academic; novelist; it doesn’t matter — blocked by fear. We wince. Who are they to even try, some whisper as we watch them tumble from their place. When it comes our time, we become that person, naked on the stage: doubtful, panicky, assured by the nagging, the poison, the gossipy gremlin chatter over our shoulders, promising that we too, will most certainly, most definitely, fail…”
Read entire post here: Elissa Altman @ Poor Man’s Feast.
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