QUIT: Dying on the Treadmill

[Part of my mission to “live deliberately” involves ruthlessly cutting out anything that saps my time, energy or money to no good end.  I’m calling these things my “Quits,” and this is one of the many items that have found themselves on my Quits List.]

Sometimes we need to learn the same lesson over and over and over again.

Like myself, who in spite of numerous posts on the same subject (see here, here, here, and here, to name a few) continually needs to remind myself of one Very Important lesson in particular.  One lesson I finally decided to acknowledge earlier this week.

Hustling, the Wrong Way

 Just last Thursday, I made the bold resolution to participate in EbookWriMo.  And by the weekend (Friday night, to be exact), I had already realized it was the wrong decision to make.

Not a bad decision, mind you—there were plenty of good things I could have done with it, and gotten from it—but the wrong decision for me and where I need to be in my life and in my headspace right now.

It’s best illustrated by a Will Smith quote I was planning to write a post on this week, before everything went all upside-down-y in my philosophy:

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things; you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.  ~Will Smith

The post I was planning on writing on this quote was a “hell yeah!” kind of post.  Will Smith is a hustler extraordinaire, and it’s made him one of the most highly paid, respected, and beloved actors in all of Hollywood.  I was going to extol the all-in dedication of being so doggedly set on your goal that you will give it 110%, 120%, until you are depleted and done—but, far and away, the winner.

But after wrestling with the decision to scrap EbookWriMo, and the reasons behind why that decision was necessary, this quote has a completely different tinge to me now.

I don’t want to die on a treadmill.  I want to be successful, and I’m more than willing to work for that (and then some), but I need to learn to be happy living my life, wherever it is, while I’m doing that.

If that makes me a bad hustler, so be it.  Will Smith can win.  He’s worked hard for it.

 Life—You’re Doing It Wrong

It’s like living in a cute little starter house, and working and toiling to renovate it so that one day you can sell it to move into a bigger, better house.  Maybe the starter house is actually pretty cozy, and maybe you enjoy the process of renovating it, but you never stop to realize that because you’re too busy Moving Forward.

Moving Forward makes you feel like you’re Doing Things.  It makes you feel like you’re Getting Important Work Done.  It makes you feel like someone who’s Making Something of their life.

Then the long-awaited day comes, and you sell your now really cute little starter house at profit and buy what you thought would be the house of your dreams.  But as soon as you get in it, you start seeing ways it could be better.  The hardwood floors could use polishing.  The feng shui in the master bedroom (with ensuite) is off.  The curtains you got for the family room seemed perfect in the catalog, but they’re all wrong now that you’ve put them up.  You could use an extra guest bedroom.  The kitchen could stand to be bigger.

So you keep doing what you do, which is Improving.  Which is Moving Forward.  And you waste even more years of living in a house and participating in a process you could be thoroughly enjoying, if only you weren’t so busy moving, moving, moving towards something in the future.

That is how I’ve been approaching my freelance career—not as a process I should enjoy every step of the way, but as one mad dash towards the end game which requires constant input of energy, and hustle, and extra, extra, extra to get it all off the ground.

Meanwhile, the rest of what this blog was supposed to be about (making my life simpler, happier, and more content) has been completely overlooked.

Well, that all starts changing this week.

My name is Cordelia, and I am a hustleraholic.  But not for long…

[postscript:  The ebook will get written, in its own due time, incorporating all of the excellent suggestions you’ve given me so far.  It just won’t get written in a 30-day frenzy that only feeds my addiction.]

Related Posts:

• Bend.
• Acceptance Does Not Mean Acquiescence
• We Are Now a One-Car Household (and Some Stuff About Zen)