Do the Work

Robert Downey Junior when asked about beating his drug addiction, or alcohol or whatever it was that kept him out of choice roles and away from Oscar consideration for so long aparantly said 'Doing it was quite easy, the hard part was deciding I wanted to.'

Likewise after hovering between 83 and 84 kg since march, in the past two weeks I've dropped down to 81kg and have managed to stay there, despite my kidney stones scare giving me a hiatus on further cross training.

Surprisingly it wasn't hard to do. just deciding to actually dedicate some of my time to exercise was the hard part. Just starting. Starting is always the hardest part for me.

I've reached a point, I'm glad to say where after an incredibly trying both emotionally and mentally year of trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my remaining 60 years, I have emerged from it now equipped with a luxurious accessory few would be willing to outlay as much income as I have to obtain.

That is to say, my accessory is a mental one, too exclusive to be recognized on the street but with a solid and dedicated user group. It is the revelation (or evolution) that makes me realise I am less afraid of failing than I am of just not trying.

Which puts me in good stead to enter a 'scalable' or 'winner takes all' profession, like the artistic or creative ones. Where I face the very real possibility of simply never succeeding. Never finding a market, or acclaim, or connections that will open doors to it actually being viable. And further, being able to say that if people won't pay me for my output, I deserve to starve, be spurned by women, left childless, homeless and forgotten on the wayside. Just as I deserve if I can create and contribute genuine value, a menagerie of fauning devotees that hang on my every word, snap up my every produce before it even reaches a wider market and stop even doubting my ability to produce.

But that luxurious success walks hand in hand with total and catastrophic failure. The die is also loaded, there's one side with 6 pips, and 5 with 1. (actually my odds are probably worse than that). But there is one thing that typically loads up the odds in favor of failure and that is that success requires that you actually decide to do the work.

This is the one characteristic shared by all viable artists in this day and age, it is the overshadowing fallability of the 'fallback' degree or career. I look at the relatively comfortable position of Bryce (in that even with out his full time profession, could probably eek out a quite comfortable living directing musical productions) because he has been doing the work since he was 12, maybe younger.

Or the oversupply of 'Street Artists' or 'Guerilla Artists' of which there are only a couple of hundred that succeed in completely saturating the entire global graffiti market, whom have been willing to go out and break the law since the were 14 or 16, learning the motions, the terrain, the equipment and giving themselves a highly risky, self-education that was far more likely to result in jail-time than than a lucrative career like Banksy.

All successful artists have this one trait in common, that they do the work at the end of the day, they sit down and actually produce something.

In the coming weeks I'm going to buy me a scanner, and this blog will hopefully become a 'sketch-a-day' type post. I'll also still be running, and writing (though I probably won't share my fiction writing here) and lest I end up on my back guzzling litres of water trying to 'pass' kidney stones for a week, I'll keep you posted on those efforts as well.

That's all for now. I have work to do.