the_long_haul raze "...being an artist for the long haul means more than harnessing sudden and terrible inspirations. it means being able to study and grow in one's character as well as one's art. it means overcoming toil and trouble and mastering that enemy of all creative forces — doubt. in the end, the race doesn't belong to the swift, but to the one who has the tenacity and the belief in himself or in something greater in order to hang in there the longest. when you come right down to it, it's much easier to be a genius at twenty-two than it is to sustain it at forty-two — or even twenty-seven." i read that the other day and it went through me like a bullet. of all things, it's a passage from a biography of jim morrison. a book i haven't flipped open in twenty-three years. i'm sure i read those words when i was thirteen. they meant nothing to me then. didn't even register. now they might as well have been written for me. the proverbial bullet wound brought it home for me that i've been looking at everything the wrong way. sure, there's been a lot of unpleasant shit to deal with. but instead of looking at all the ways i've managed to absorb it, repurpose it, and transcend it, i've been fixated on the stink. that doesn't do anyone any good. and it minimizes the work itself. i needed that jolt. 191029 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Thanks for this. I've been frustrated about not finishing the book - well, recently, more motivated because it finally seems to be going somewhere - but it's a timely reminder. Here's to the people finishing projects but having their time eaten up by, e.g., irrational landlords, 45-hour workweeks, partial differential equations... (I just know those partial differential equations are a problem somewhere!) 191030 what's it to you? who go blather from