Doing It the Hard Way

We as people seem to always have to take the hard way. Say you come to this cliff and you need to get to the top, because all your friends and peers are up there having a grand ol time. There is a ladder attached to the side of it that leads all the way to the top. Easy right? But instead some of us can’t accept that getting to the top could possibly be that easy, so we go to the sports equipment store and we buy all the things to climb up the sheer rock face and since we have no idea how to use any of it we take classes and maybe we get a mentor to come along. And dang it, we climb the side of that mountain.

We’re at the top now. But so are all the other people who took the ladder, and they’ve got all the cool camping spots, they’ve been enjoying the view and already have their camp fires going, making s’mores.

Sure we learned something new, and we may even feel a sense of accomplishment, because we took the hard way, but on the other hand, we could have been up here too, all toasty and warm, eating s’mores with all the other people who took the ladder.

I know, that’s a weird example, but it’s what came into my head and it kind of fits for what I’m thinking about. 

I had an epiphany tonight. It’s okay to take the easy way. You get to the same spot in the end, and often times without all the heartache and struggles.

I am a self sabotager. I almost always take the hard way. I don’t trust the easy way, because damn it, it’s easy and nothing good is easy, right?  I want to write for a living. I don’t make anywhere near enough to even consider it, because I have been going about it the hard way.

From what I’ve observed, the formula for success (in the very simplest of terms) is to write a good book, publish and then write another, rinse and repeat and so on and so forth. (Don’t take my word for it though, because again, I’m not making even in the stratosphere of what I would need to write full time.) But is that what I am doing? Yes and no.  In fact, I’ve been sitting on two completed works for over a year. Why you ask?  Because the formula is just too easy. Right?

But writing isn’t easy. Coming up with an idea, sitting down and writing it all out, sticking out the middle that sags, or the writer’s block until you complete it, then going back over it a zillion times to fix all my double spaces at the end of sentences, fixing the word you’re when I typed your and all the other hard things that make it pretty and shiny, like letting someone else read it and tell you every little spot you flubbed it up in one way or another.

Those are all pretty darn hard. So, I’ve resolved to stop beating myself up, banging my head against the wall. I am going to try to take the ladder instead of the other, more difficult way, ‘cause I’ve already got enough on my plate, without having to learn where the straps on that dang harness go.