showing up
It won’t always feel easy but it will always feel right
These past few weeks it’s felt hard to write. Most days, after my corporate job workday ends, oh man I really don’t want to write. I want to sink into a deep abyss of non-thinking. No idea feels complete, no idea feels potent.
The modern despair of prioritization is that we have too many things to do and too little time to do them.
Showing up feels like a long trudge. It means sacrificing a lot of easier, glimmering options to work through something difficult. And you have to operate without knowing if the thing is worth it or not. All for the hope that one day you’ll discover something that moves, dreams. Lithe and beautiful and electric. Something that sings.
I want a song, don’t you want one too? I want airiness and lightness. Motion. I want a world that feels open and forgiving and delightfully sweet. But the world feels cluttered and chaotic to me right now — I have too many obligations and not enough energy. So, I need to pare it down. My life needs to be simple. It’s up to me to create that world that I desire. It begins with putting my hands right into the soil of it. Planting something new and green, bearing witness to its growth over time. Even when it feels like a long winter.
I’ve been trying to bring myself back to my working definition of devotion: choosing what you show up for again and again.
I think it’s critical to show up when you’re feeling imperfect. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And it’s important to calibrate yourself toward genuine effort. Penning the first few words. Performing a full concert to an empty room. Putting in the work when every cell in your body professes I am really tired and I do not want to.
The heart measures earnestness. The mind measures discipline. To show up you must have both. On the days it feels hard, I remind myself that I am blessed to have the choice to do what I love every single day. My limits are entirely internal. Beauty is right there, in reach. I just have to actually do the thing. Show up. The more I recognize this truth, the more expansive it makes me feel.
It won’t always feel easy but it will feel right. And there’s no tradeoff for that feeling in the whole world.
-N.
Quote of the week
Nearly every artist can draw when he has made a discovery. But to draw in order to discover–that is the godlike process.
John Berger
Song of the week (I love The Marias so much)
I really needed to read this. So timely, thank you.
Love this. Especially: "I think it’s critical to show up when you’re feeling imperfect. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And it’s important to calibrate yourself toward genuine effort. Penning the first few words. Performing a full concert to an empty room. Putting in the work when every cell in your body professes I am really tired and I do not want to."
When I used to do competitive gymnastics, our coaches made it a point to emphasize how important it was to train hard on the days you were sore, in pain, and didn't want to come in. Whether you could do everything or not, it was *critical* that you showed up. When we would fall or hurt ourselves on a skill, we got right back up and had to do the skill 3 more times until we knew we weren't scared of it, so that we wouldn't resent it forever. This was a critical lesson for me: show up, push through, even when (especially when!) you really do not want to. That is when the craft gets honed. Not because that is necessarily when you'll produce your best work, but because to produce your best work, you need to be consistent, and indifferent to how you feel about the act of doing the work. The pen needs to hit the page for the ideas to flow through it.
I've always believed excellence is mostly about persistence, and this piece articulates why quite well. Thank you for writing it <3