All this difficult can become easy.
The first word I thought of was ‘hard,’ but that’s not quite right. The opposite of ‘hard’ is ‘soft’ 😛
But ‘hard’ is what I was thinking of, in the sense of writing is hard. Doing pushups is hard. Working from home is hard.
Until it’s not.
That kind of stuff will always take effort. It will always be ‘hard’ work. But, is it always difficult? …no. It’s not. Sometimes, it’s remarkably, stunningly easy, simple even, and I forget that sometimes. It’s not always hard.
Someone posted this morning in the 20Books Facebook group, which is a group of indie authors, about how they make over $100K in three months on their books, and the take away for me was: I. Can. Do. That. It will take a lot of hard work, but it is absolutely something I can do.
Those kinds of wake up calls aren’t always helpful. Sometimes—most of the time—they make me feel like a loser. I haven’t figure it out yet, and I compare myself to the person who has. The thought of ‘you can do that’ doesn’t serve to help me. It makes me even more frustrated for not HAVING done it. This wake up call may very well turn into that, but at least I know what the antidote to it is: letting go in the embrace of the moment.
But, for today at least, it really made me think about the fact that everything that is hard becomes easy with enough time and effort.
I can see it in my body. I *have* a body right now. For the first time in my life. And it wasn’t fucking hard, you guys. It was way, waaaaay easier and more straightforward than I ever would have thought: just do pushups and sit-ups every day. It’s that fucking simple. Is it hard work? Fuck yes. And a lot of it, too. I do it five days a week, and I’m only adding more and more. But, it’s not DIFFICULT. I hardly have to think about it. It’s part of my routine, now, and it’s achingly simple. Just do the exercise, and the body comes with it. I don’t have to even think about the body or strength part of it all…I just have to DO the activity. The rest happens.
And fuck me if I can’t learn a lesson from that and apply it to my writing: just do the activity. Set the goal, keep adding on ever so slowly, and do the activity. Everything else will follow.
That was the message of that FB post this morning. Same truth.
It’s not hard, actually. It’s easy. Or…at least it’s simple. And simple is always hardest when I make it hard.
Eventually, and I do think it’s inevitable, it becomes easy.