I Don’t Want to Work Hard
Why can’t less be worth more?
I don’t want to sit at this desk for hours a day writing in order to make mad cash on this platform. Others have stated their financial goals. My first thought was how can something out of your control be a goal? But isn’t that most things? And that’s how the Law of Attraction works. I’ve done it time and again.
Set a goal, put in the work, and the Universe handles it. They’re not BANKING on it or EXPECTING it, or complaining saying, “I wanted THIS MUCH and I’m not getting it!” That would be ME who is saying that.
Right.
I’m jealous of the success I see because these authors AREN’T rare geniuses. But they’re honest and their voices resonate with people. More so than mine seems to at the moment. And that’s alright. I’m getting there.
I need to be more honest with myself and my words and stop trying to impress people with my writing and learn how to edit when my gut is telling me to edit. These are NOT diary entries.
I think too much, which I’ve always known and is obvious. But I haven’t been able to STOP doing it. So what’s different now? Action? Repeated action?
Every story chips away at the wall you’ve built around yourself and you get closer to your true voice, your fear subsides and you just start being more vulnerable.
I WANT ALL OF THIS TO BE EASIER THAN IT IS
I’m a good writer and it comes easy to me, but I want it to be even easier. And what I mean is I want everything handed to me by putting in very little effort. I want to make tons of money off five articles a month.
I’m not going to get the results I want by NOT putting in the work. I have nothing but time on my hands and I spend most of that screwing around on social media, watching TV, eating, shopping, being anxious and avoiding life.
I’m afraid to sit down here and write, afraid of what might come out of me and what I might find or gain or create, who I might become, how it might change me and my world, what it’s going to do to me and that I’ll feel out of control, when it’s actually GIVING me control.
It’s like I want to be anywhere else doing anything else but writing. What am I so afraid of? All the things I just stated.
I keep waiting for someone to come in and hand me what I want, to save me, to help, to take it from me and give it to someone else so I can benefit from it.
My parents didn’t serve me by doing everything for me and continuing to do so much for me. It stops being helpful and starts holding me back. It’s been holding me back for a long time.
But here I am and this is who I am and this is how I go about changing it.
Sit down and write every day without judging what’s coming out of my brain. Write it down and suss it out and put it up.
You have a voice and you have things to say, and people like it and they reach out to you and you touch them and help them and change their lives, and as long as you keep being true to yourself and stop judging everything you want to say you will make billions of dollars on Medium, too.
You have to put in the work and let the Universe figure out the details.
It’s the same reason I’m not losing weight.
I’m holding on to it, don’t want to change, am afraid of becoming someone new, or really, more myself. I’m afraid of being who I want to be because I’ve felt trapped for years.
Stop looking around to evaluate every little change and just keep your head down and write the things and put them out there.
Who cares if people don’t like or agree with what you’re saying? Just write and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing.
Well-meaning people tell me what they think I want to hear, like the success I see is a fluke, unsustainable, “You’re not them Niki, do what works for you”… instead of what I NEED to hear which is sit down and do the work.
If these writers can do it with full-time jobs and families then I can do it with all this free time I have.
I don’t know what I thought the work would look like. Something more glamorous? Sophisticated? Clean? Organized? Antiseptic? Why am I shocked when I see pictures of artists in their studios with their work and they look disheveled and homeless?
The people who make art don’t look like the people who buy it. I want to be both of those people.
I want this to be grander than me sitting in the spare room in my pajamas clacking away on this laptop for hours, not moving.
I want to be in full make-up and great clothes with a clean, pristine desk, for it to smell amazing in here and be uncluttered and for the inspiration to just rain down on me because all these things have aligned.
I want getting the right writing room and desk and chair and accessories to make all the difference when the only thing that makes a difference is sitting down and doing the work.
I want to complain and say it’s too hard and other people must have some superhuman kind of time or ability that I just don’t have and can’t get. I want there to be a reason I can’t do this and be successful at it. I want to blame someone else for it.
Why? Why does that feel easier than doing the work?
Because the theory is if you complain enough then someone will give you what you want. That might work in a restaurant or a hotel, or on my parents, but it doesn’t work in life. You just sit there, a complaining victim who watches everyone else get what they want.
They’re not GETTING what they want, they’re EARNING IT. They’re putting in the work to get what they want while I complain that it’s not being handed to me. Because so much has been handed to me for doing very little or nothing at all.
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
One foot out the door, always. And that’s suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.
I have to get up and WORK. I’m not even going to stop complaining that I don’t have the energy or it’s too hard or tiring. I’m going to keep complaining AND do the work at the same time.
Kicking and screaming until the excuses propping up my vulnerabilities fall away and confidence strengthens my convictions.
Pouring it out on paper will once again become second nature.
Thank you for reading! Please enjoy another existential crisis.
