Hard Work, Part 2
Sep. 14th, 2006 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intjonathanPart 1 is also available.
My father never taught me much about hard work. I think he was too busy working hard to talk much about it. In my memory, hard work was something I just did, and was praised for. Whether it was expected or not seemed to be beside the point.
But success always came easy to me, and accomplishing what would take hard work for others never felt very hard. If I could succeed at what others called hard, could I credit my success to that same hard work? Or was it something else? Things I came to call difficult often turned out to be unreasonable or unnecessary, and life went around it. Things I found very difficult were rarely made unavoidable. Over time, I learned how to avoid difficult things.
This talent came by way of two factors. First, my late entry into the schooling system made me older than most of the kids around me. A few months can make a big difference early in life. Second, my parents had little occasion to force me into things when I was doing so well.
But when college came, I found myself unprepared for the breathtaking difficulty of many classes. Not only were they hard, but nothing I could do would make them easier. I became content with lower and lower grades, until bottom-end Cs were cause for celebration. When graduation came, was again unprepared, this time for departure. The dark secret about graduation, the one no recent graduate will tell you, is that no matter how much you wish to be done with college, you will miss it. Leaving school is a harder class than any you will take there. You think to yourself, "if only I could get a real job, I'd be pulling in bank and go home and just chill." And sure, you can do that, but that doesn't make it easy. There's no "but I'm in college" excuse at that point.
This move has been, and is, very hard. I keep not buying food, not organizing, not acting like this is my favorite place in the world because it's easier. Easier to pretend it doesn't matter, because I just moved. But if I keep acting like I'm going to go home sometime soon, this will never be home. And I may not want it to be, but it must be.
But what kind of home do I want? What kind of life would I have if it wasn't defined by a routine that changes every 3 months? Will I still be getting up at 8:30 every morning next January? Next June?
It is a hard, unavoidable, and very necessary problem. A river crossing in winter.
September arrived on my doorstep today, a chill wind and a gray forecast. It was not welcome this year.
My father never taught me much about hard work. I think he was too busy working hard to talk much about it. In my memory, hard work was something I just did, and was praised for. Whether it was expected or not seemed to be beside the point.
But success always came easy to me, and accomplishing what would take hard work for others never felt very hard. If I could succeed at what others called hard, could I credit my success to that same hard work? Or was it something else? Things I came to call difficult often turned out to be unreasonable or unnecessary, and life went around it. Things I found very difficult were rarely made unavoidable. Over time, I learned how to avoid difficult things.
This talent came by way of two factors. First, my late entry into the schooling system made me older than most of the kids around me. A few months can make a big difference early in life. Second, my parents had little occasion to force me into things when I was doing so well.
But when college came, I found myself unprepared for the breathtaking difficulty of many classes. Not only were they hard, but nothing I could do would make them easier. I became content with lower and lower grades, until bottom-end Cs were cause for celebration. When graduation came, was again unprepared, this time for departure. The dark secret about graduation, the one no recent graduate will tell you, is that no matter how much you wish to be done with college, you will miss it. Leaving school is a harder class than any you will take there. You think to yourself, "if only I could get a real job, I'd be pulling in bank and go home and just chill." And sure, you can do that, but that doesn't make it easy. There's no "but I'm in college" excuse at that point.
This move has been, and is, very hard. I keep not buying food, not organizing, not acting like this is my favorite place in the world because it's easier. Easier to pretend it doesn't matter, because I just moved. But if I keep acting like I'm going to go home sometime soon, this will never be home. And I may not want it to be, but it must be.
But what kind of home do I want? What kind of life would I have if it wasn't defined by a routine that changes every 3 months? Will I still be getting up at 8:30 every morning next January? Next June?
It is a hard, unavoidable, and very necessary problem. A river crossing in winter.
September arrived on my doorstep today, a chill wind and a gray forecast. It was not welcome this year.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 05:02 pm (UTC)